Old Characters Never Die
by Kristi
Summary: They just get sorted. Gen. Slight slash if you squint. Standalone. Ensemble.


Title: "Old Characters Never Die"  
Author: Kristi  
Rating: PG  
Xover with: Harry Potter, Buffy, cameo from others  
Characters: Ensemble  
Genres: Xover, standlone, crack, postseries, slash if you squint, noromo, gen, friendship

"Old Characters Never Die"

Old characters never die. They just get sorted.

Far, far away, in a land beyond your television set, a long line snaked down the Great Hall. At the front of it, a wizard with a long beard stood on a dais talking about a hat. At the back of the line, Prince Charming was working over a lovely young maiden.

Wait, no. That's just Hawkeye Pierce. And the hand he's holding sure as hell doesn't belong to any _maiden_.

"Hands to yourself, Pierce," Margaret snapped.

"Really. You'd think you'd have learned some decorum by now," Frank said.

At the front of the hall, Dumbledore was making a speech. No one was really listening, but the gist was getting across, especially since the other magically-inclined professors were wisely reiterating the important parts on a loop in the endless sky ceiling above. Fiction afterlife housing was getting overcrowded, with too many different types of characters causing too many interpersonal problems. Why, the types of psychotic weirdness put out by HBO alone was causing no end of moral and legal . . . questionable personalities. So, the Fiction Housing Authority was asking everyone to report to Hogwarts to be rehoused with like-minded fictional characters, to ensure a well ordered fiction afterlife.

"Your hat's on fire, Frank," Trapper said, bored, while he was making time with Lorelai Gilmore.

Neither Radar nor Klinger made a move to help while Frank spun in circles, batting at the smoldering khaki cap on his head, dancing even closer to the torch he'd been standing under. Even Father Mulcahy looked too keyed-up and overwealmed to care. Charles seemed almost amused, from his official location of holding up the castle wall. Up ahead, the line had stalled while the Sorting Hat was having difficulties with Buffy Summers and her friends. 'I'm a _good_ witch now, I swear!' rang out repeatedly.

B.J. and Henry were interrupted from their game of canasta when, in a flurry of impressive movement considering the man's age, Sherman Potter snatched Burns' hat, threw it on the ground, and stomped on it. He picked up the smoldering, petroleum-smelling thing and pointed it at a terrified Burns.

"Frank! I put up with you for a whole police action! By gum, I am not babysitting you for a guldern second longer!"

"Yes, Colonel," said Burns weakly, accepting his hat.

Hawkeye and Trapper smirked. "I like him," Trapper said. Charles laughed. Which set off Margaret.

It was a long, irritating, bickering wait. The entire cast of _Happy Days_ went into Hufflepuff. _Star Trek_ was almost universally Gryffindors, notable exception being the Vulcans, tailor-made for Ravenclaw. Comic book villains sorted into Slytherin were parted from their sidekicks, surprisingly divvied up among the other three houses, which Potter said just goes to show that a bad egg can spoil the barrel.

By the time the _M*A*S*H _cast reached the front, almost all the sitcoms and most of the dramas were sorted. Trapper had offended Lorelai and he'd lost sight of her.

"Well?" said Dumbledore.

"How's this thing work?" Hawkeye said to the man in the decorated robes. "I mean, does it read our minds or is there a galvanic skin response sort of thing?"

"Don't ask stupid questions, Pierce," Frank said.

"It's magic," Radar whispered.

"Ah," Hawkeye said.

They stood in a clump.

"Somebody's got to go first." There was a twinkle in Dumbledore's eye.

"I think we should go in rank order," Margaret said primly.

"You would," Henry muttered. B.J. smiled behind him. He'd won the canasta game, but only by a little.

"Okay then," Potter said.

The others watched him walk away, noticing then that he was wearing his World War I class A's with the cavalry jodhpurs. They felt like they were saying goodbye. Potter stepped onto the dais, sat on the stool, and Dumbledore lowered the Hat onto his head.

"_My, my, my,_" said a rather slick voice into Potter's head. It reminded him of Hawkeye. "_Seen plenty of adventure in your time, haven't we? If you go into Gryffindor, you could hunt dragons, kiss mermaids, shoot out wild Indians and sail with pirates. How would you like that?_"

Visions of Robin Hood and Errol Flynn danced in Sherman's mind.

But a voice called out to him.

"Sherman!" There, at the long feast table, under the yellow Hufflepuff banner. Mildred. Waving at him.

"_Fraternization is perfectly permitted between houses, you know_," said that slick voice. _"You could go off on any adventure you like and come home to her when you're done_. _It's only a ten minute ride on the bullet train between the districts._"

Potter smiled. "No. I think, if it's just the same to you, I'll be spending this tour at home."

_"Very well._" This slick voice sounded satisfied. "HUFFLEPUFF!"

Henry went next - another quick Hufflepuff. His table rose and cheered to welcome him. He shrugged, feeling foolish at the center of all this attention, and sat next to the Potters. His girls climbed over his shoulders and Lorraine passed him his baby boy.

Margaret strode up. She gave Dumbledore a quizzical eye before she sat on the stool.

"No funny stuff, now."

"It's perfectly safe," came his grandfatherly voice behind her.

She laughed. "Of course. It's not as if it can turn me into a toad. Will it?"

Dumbledore placed the hat on her head. "It hasn't turned anyone into a toad in _days_."

Margaret gasped. The hat's voice rose smooth in her mind.

"_Well, you're an ambitious thing, hmm?_"

"I get my work done better than any other nurse in the field, and I expect to be noticed for it, just like any man would."

"_You could do very well in Slytherin. They have all the money, you know, and the most handsome men. You could be set for life, if you make the right match._"

Margaret looked at the table under the green and silver banners. Lots of business suits. Lots of superpowers, too. Beautiful women in gorgeous dresses already chatting up very handsome and very powerful men. She could almost feel the silk of one of those dresses kissing her skin, the bite of the ankle strap. She knew which table Pierce would be sitting at. The Gryffindors were already starting a Sorting Hat Drinking Game - they were by far they were the table having the most fun. There was a lot of considerations.

"Can I change if I don't like it? Like, if a certain someone is ruining the afterlife?"

"_You can fill out form Get Me Out of Here stroke Now_."

"Then I'll take Gryffindor, please."

While Margaret took her seat at the feast table, Charles politely announced he was leaving them all, took to the dais, and asked for the Sorting Hat "with the minimum of this hocus pocus nonsense."

_"Dr. Winchester, at last we meet."_

"I beg your pardon. I severely doubt you move in the Boston set, or should I set, the Boston set's coat racks."

"_Do you understand how this works?"_

"While I do not peruse oversaturated children's - and I hesitate to use this word - _literature_, I am capable of comprehending the verbal instructions given by the gentleman with the fire hazard dangling from his chin. (And I thought Hunnicutt's lip caterpillar was gauche.) I would like to please be sent to Ravenclaw, where I may read and listen to music at my leisure, far from the _stink_ of incivility I've had to endure these nigh two years."

_"Are you sure you wouldn't like to give Hufflepuff a try?"_

"Are! you - _mad? _Surely -" he laughed - "you jest." His tone turned threatening. "I demand you put me in Ravenclaw _this instant_. Or I shall -"

"_Anything to get off your head. You don't get this kind of skintop with children. _RAVENCLAW."

Radar was hanging to the back. Klinger, eager to get it over with, took the dais next. He shook Dumbledore's hand, said, "I got an uncle in the old country who looks just like you! Can you shrink heads?" and plunked down on the stool. Dumbledore chuckled and put the hat on his head.

"_Hello_," the hat said. He sounded like Uncle Abdul if Uncle had learned British English.

Klinger made himself comfortable. "Hiya. Listen, I don't think I got any of the important qualities you're looking for, you know? I'm not very brave, I'm not smart, I don't like helping people all that much, and I don't think I'm too ambitious. So can you just put me in the house where a guy like me can spend a Sunday with a beer and a hammock with a cute girl in it? And, maybe, a house in the suburbs?"

_"My purpose is not fortune telling_."

"Okay, look, hat, I didn't ask to be here and you didn't ask to sort a guy like me -"

This went on for some time.

_"You must care about something_."

"I don't know." Max's mind was going blank. "Being happy, I guess. Being safe. Knowing that the people I love are okay. Knowing that the stupid war is gonna be over one day and no one like it will ever start again, not never."

"GRYFFINDOR!_"_

Max grinned.

When Frank reached Dumbledore, he snatched the Hat from the wizard's hand and shoved it on his own head, muttering about perverts touching him. He didn't sit on the stool, but stood and had a ten minute tantrum. Across the four tables, all talking, scheming, drinking, and reading stopped while the one-sided arguing rang from the rafters.

"No! I want to be a Slytherin! I don't care! I'm not a Hufflepuff, I'm not, I'm not!"

The Hufflepuff table crowded around the Potters, Henry, and Lorelai Gilmore, who had watched _M*A*S*H_ as a kid and therefore had the scoop on Burns.

"Frank's the kind of guy who doesn't like to look in the personality-mirror," Lorelai said.

"Because he's afraid that he already knows what he'll see," Sherman put in.

It was generally decided that no one wanted a Frank in their ranks. Similar discussions were going on in Slytherin, but since no one knew Frank over there, the villains were mostly brokering who would get him as a butler, cabana boy, manservant, or cage cleaner.

The Hat may juggle lives like so many throwpieces on a game board, but it was not heartless. It put Frank into Hufflepuff as a kind of protective custody. Sherman groaned. Mildred reminded him that the fiction afterlife is a very large town. Frank knew better than to sit with him, and instead sat alone at the very end of the table. No one offered him any pumpkin juice, not even the preacher's wife from_ 7th Heaven_.

Radar went next. He had a quiet talk with the Hat, and then got back in line.

"Did you break it?" Hawkeye said.

"It said it couldn't sort me until it talked to Father Mulcahy!" Radar was at parts offended and confused. "I told him I just want to go sit with my ma and Uncle Ed over in Hufflepuff!"

"This is surprising," Mulcahy said.

"Calm down, Radar," Trapper said.

"It's probably just a clerical error," B.J. said.

"Yeah," Hawkeye said. "You know how local government is."

Trapper patted his shoulder. B.J. and Hawkeye exchanged looks.

"I wonder what it wants with me," Mulcahy said.

"Why don't I go have a talk with it," Hawkeye said.

Trapper glanced at him. Hawkeye shrugged. "Gotta go sometime."

B.J. reached out and touched his arm. "Look, in case this is goodbye . . ."

Hawkeye looked at the two best friends he'd ever had. "Yeah."

B.J. hugged him. "Hey, while you're up there, look for Peggy, okay? Point her out to me?"

"Sure," Hawkeye said.

Hawkeye said similar goodbyes to Radar and Mulcahy, and hesitated before Trapper. They paused. B.J. sidled away, arms crossed.

"We'll probably be in the same house," Trapper said.

"Yeah. Sure," Hawkeye said.

That impish grin. "But just in case . . . I always wanted to give you this." Trapper grabbed Hawkeye by the shoulders, pulled him close, and kissed him on the mouth. Hawkeye kissed back.

B.J. laughed. Radar squawked an apoplectic fit and Mulcahy had to steer him away.

Hawkeye stumbled away, smirking. He winked, waved, and stepped on the dais.

"Alright, Mr. Wizard," he said to Dumbledore, "do your worst."

"Not a day goes by I'm not thankful someone else was your headmaster," Dumbledore said.

"Well. Boys will be boys." Hawkeye smirked proudly. He sat on the stool. "Listen, I wanted to ask you -"

The Sorting Hat shared an inch of airspace with the hairs on Hawkeye's head before it shouted, "GRYFFINDOR!"

Hawkeye blinked, surprised. He turned to speak to the hat as it rested in Dumbledore's hands, but it was silent, a mere accessorizing garment. Dumbledore's face was stony. Hawkeye shrugged and went to sit next to Margaret. She patted his thigh and poured him some of the mystery booze everyone else was drinking. She seemed to notice that his mood was less enthusiastic that the other Gryffs'.

Trapper searched for Hawkeye as he walked to the dais, but the distance between them was too great for speaking. There was a demarcation between the confused unsorted mass and the confident, assured sorted who knew where their lives were going. They were trading phone numbers, schmoozing business deals, making dates, enquiring about each other's children. The districts were being made right now, and invisible but very real fences were being built.

Hawkeye was observing all this as he watched Trapper sit on the stool. The hat was on his head for seconds before it shouted his house.

"SLYTHERIN!"

"That doesn't make sense!" Hawkeye said. "He's not like - like those guys." He gestured at Kodos the Impaler, twirling his mustache at the Slytherin table.

"Ambition isn't only for villains," Margaret said. "Trapper has always been very single-minded. That was the difference between he and you."

"But that doesn't mean he's a danger to other Gryffindors, for God's sake!" Hawkeye said.

Margaret didn't answer, but she was thinking. She set down her glass and pressed her lips together.

Still in line, B.J. shook hands with Mulcahy and Radar, certain he wouldn't be seeing them again.

"What district do you want, sir?" Radar said.

B.J. looked across the Great Hall. It was so filled by now, it was hard to find anyone in the crowd. "The one that'll get me a little house on the beach with my wife and daughter."

Mulcahy patted his shoulder. "Of course. Good luck."

"Thank you, Father. Radar."

B.J. jogged up to the dais with long-legged strides. He was as tall as Dumbledore, had the same light blue eyes. The two men looked at one another across a huge unspoken question that hung in the air. B.J. was suddenly nervous.

Dumbledore looked genuinely aggrieved. "Peg isn't here, B.J.," he said. "She isn't a true character. I'm very sorry."

"Sorry nothing, what do you mean, not a true character!" B.J. said. "She was on-screen, more than once even. Potter got Mildred and she was just a photo."

Dumbledore reached out for B.J., but he yanked his arm away. "This is never information it pleases me to give. For an off-screen character to be a true character, the on-screen character she is attached to must remain devoted and faithful to her. The on-screen character must tether the off-screen character strongly enough to support the fans' belief in the off-screen character. These are not my rules."

"I don't -" sick realization coiled in B.J.'s stomach. "Because I cheated on her? I was in the middle of a goddamn war! I slept with one woman, once, and I lose Peggy forever?"

"I confess I do not own a television, but I doubt your assessment is correct. Please, try on the Sorting Hat. You may speak with Immigration Affairs after you are assigned -"

"I don't want your goddamn Sorting Hat, I want my family!"

"B.J." The soft voice came from behind him.

B.J. turned. Father Mulcahy was at the edge of the dais, reaching out a hand to him.

B.J. knelt at the steps. "Father, I haven't seen Peg and Erin in two years, except for ten seconds of one dream episode -!"

Mulcahy took his hand across the gap of the dais stairs. "My son, I know this is difficult. We all left people behind. I'm afraid the fans never cared for my sister - I probably should never have called her 'Beaver.' But this isn't the time. This man cannot help you and he doesn't deserve your anger."

B.J. looked back at the wizard, and saw something of an old man under the spirit gum pasted beard. He had lost people, too. B.J. squeezed Mulcahy's hand. He took the hat from Dumbledore. Without putting it on his head, he heard the smarmy voice in his mind. It sounded very pleased with itself.

_"Don't like to play by the rules, do we?_"

"I'll play by the rules when the rules make sense."

_"Where would you like to live out your days?_"

"I don't care. Just don't stick me with Burns. Put me with Hawkeye - no." That idea made B.J.'s skin skitter with nerves, and he didn't know why. "Put me . . . put me where people will leave me alone."

"RAVENCLAW!"

B.J. sighed. No Hawkeye. No one else he knew, either. Plenty of books. The tables were mostly crowded. He had a choice to sit next to Charles, or a schizophrenic older man doing long proofs on the tablecloth. He chose the mathematician.

On the dais, Mulcahy, Radar, Dumbledore, and the Hat were having a private conversation. Presently, a man in a pinstripe suit and a woman in a too-severe bun joined the group.

Hawkeye was watching them from the Gryffindor table. Margaret was watching him.

"You're up to something," she said.

"Just a little mayhem." He sipped innocently at the mystery drink. It burned when it went down and left a little fizzle on his tongue.

Across the table, Buffy Summers took a long hit from her drink and made faces. Angel, beside her, watched in amusement.

"Hi!" she effervesced at Hawk and Margaret. "I'm the slayer, professional apocalypse preventer."

Hawkeye beamed at the cute, drunk blonde girl who he didn't know could flatten him with her pinky. "I'm Hawkeye, professional malcontent."

Margaret was all smiles for Angel. "And you?"

"I lurk."

Margaret retracted her handshake.

"So, ah," Hawkeye twirled his glass casually, "what do you think of this new housing initiative?"

"I think anything that involves feeding me is a-okay!" Buffy had laid into the feast the moment food had appeared in the serving platters. Slaying was an aerobic activity. Also, she was clearly blitzed.

"I think it's a way for the government to divide and conquer," Angel rumbled. "Put the villains in a ghetto, keep the weaker types happy and unquestioning, keep the smart people away from anyone they can influence, and the heroes away from the people who need saving. It's pabulum for the populace."

"That too," Buffy said. "But he says it better."

"They call it 'voluntary,'" Margaret said, "but what would you do if you didn't move out? They'd 'reassign' god knows what kind of people into your neighborhood."

"My two best friends and I were just sent to three separate houses," Hawkeye said. "It's starting to feel like sixth grade, when Mrs. Silverman passed a decree that my best friend Andy and I were never allowed in the same homeroom again."

Margaret looked at him.

"It was a _small_ out of control fire," Hawkeye said.

"Was it in the gym?" Buffy said.

Angel discretely moved her glass out of reach. She snagged his arm and got it back.

"So how's about a little disaster to ruin a perfectly planned civic meeting?" Hawkeye said.

"I'm up for that," Buffy said.

"I'm your man," Angel said.

"Sounds gorgeous," Margaret said.

Hawkeye whistled. Trapper, B.J., Radar, and Mulcahy met the four Gryffindors at the back of the hall.

"Who's she?" Radar said.

"Trouble," Trapper said, looking Buffy over.

Buffy preened. Angel glowered.

"Peg's not here, Hawk," B.J. was saying, while Margaret was trying to calm him down.

Hawkeye squeezed his arm. "It's okay. We don't have to play by their rules. Father, what were you talking about up there?"

"They don't want to Sort us," Radar said.

"The Hat said I'm to take a government go-between position," Mulcahy said, "as a councilmen who serves on some sort of administration board."

"And they want me to be like a clerk, but more important," Radar said.

"We wouldn't live in a district," Mulcahy said, "we'd be impartial."

"In other words," Buffy said, "you'd have power."

Radar and Mulcahy looked at each other in surprised. They'd been hard workers, put-upon heroes, and saviors of the underdogs; but never _powerful_.

Hawkeye grinned. "You two, go. Play their game. We'll find you when we need you."

Radar and Mulcahy took off for the table at the front of the hall. Buffy and Angel were having a quiet conference of tactics, while Margaret listened and took notes and Trapper leaned one muscled arm up against a wall and tried to catch her eye.

Quietly, Hawkeye said to B.J., "Did they tell you where Erin is?"

B.J. shook his head. "With Peg, I hope."

"I'm sorry, Beej. Did they say why?"

B.J. hesitated. "Not really, no. Listen, you and Trapper . . ."

Hawkeye smiled, shaking his head. "A kiss is just a kiss."

B.J. patted him on the shoulder. "Why don't we join the planning party."

"Yeah," Hawkeye said. "I think it's time for some inter-house fraternization. . . ."

It was just a small riot, really.


End file.
